


awaken the sky

by KiaraSayre



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, How to Train Your Dragon 2 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1906656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiaraSayre/pseuds/KiaraSayre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Toothless helped Hiccup.  Or rather, 'helped.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	awaken the sky

**Author's Note:**

> For [trekkiemage](http://trekkiemage.tumblr.com)! The last section contains major spoilers for HTTYD 2, and while the rest take place before the movie, they are NOT spoiler-free. See end notes for more detailed warnings.

i.

Hiccup tries to tell himself that the damage isn't _too_ too bad, and that in light of Berk's recent and enthusiastic adoption of dragons as friends instead of deadly enemies, a redecoration of the Kill Ring to be a little less murder-y is probably called for, but it turns out that he's not that great at lying to himself.

Even Gobber is staring at the chains on the ground - the chains that used to, in fact, be the ceiling. "So," Gobber says faintly, " _how_ did this happen again…?"

"Well," Hiccup begins, and Snotlout - of course - interrupts.

"Um, _Hiccup's dragon_ tried to _kill me_?" he says, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world. "And then Hookfang defended me like the amazing dragon that he is, and saved my life from Hiccup's terrible one."

Gobber turns to Hiccup, waiting for Hiccup's indignant denial. Hiccup winces.

"Really?" Gobber says, raising his eyebrows.

"Just because I said that Hiccup was useless before he got the coolest dragon - " Snotlout begins, and even from the other side of the no-longer-the-Kill-Ring-but-not-yet-renamed, where both Toothless and Hookfang are waiting in what's basically dragon time-out, Hiccup can see Toothless's head whip around, his ears back and his eyes narrow.

"Well, he _was_!" Snotlout says.

"All right, maybe from now on nobody should insult Hiccup when his dragon is close enough to both hear and potentially incinerate whoever's talking," Gobber says. He puts a hand on Snotlout's shoulder, or at least would have put a hand on Snotlout's shoulder if he had been using the hand that was actually a hand; instead, he whacks Snotlout on the shoulder with his prosthetic, which is currently a club. The noise of it hitting Snotlout's helmet rings out across the not-Kill-Ring, and Hiccup probably shouldn't find it satisfying...but he does.

"He's just a little overprotective," Hiccup says, shrugging to Gobber. "I mean, he did basically save my life a couple of times in that whole dragon battle thing…"

"Oh, you're still playing _that_ card, huh?" Snotlout says.

"What, you mean the 'defeating the evil dragon, ending the war between dragons and Vikings, and teaching all of Berk how to ride dragons instead of trying to kill them' card?" Hiccup says. "Nope. Not playing that at all."

"Let's be honest, Hiccup," Gobber says, "the only car you really _have_ to play is the 'my Night Fury doesn't like it when people are mean to me and it's a _Night Fury_ '...card."

"There's also that one," Hiccup concedes.

"Although Snotlout does have _one_ point," Gobber says, "which is that _someone_ was supposed to be at work an hour ago…"

"Oh," Hiccup says. "...whoops?"

"That actually wasn't one of my points - " Snotlout says, and Gobber pats him on the shoulder again, this time hard enough to knock him over.

"Okay, though, bud, you really don't have to do that," Hiccup tells Toothless as they walk together towards the forge (Toothless loves watching Hiccup work, although every time it becomes apparent that whatever Hiccup's making isn't actually for Toothless, he gets much less enthusiastic). "I mean, as much as I enjoy watching you leap to my defense - with, y'know, fire - it's going to be a problem if the end result of every time someone insults me is property damage."

Toothless flicks an ear, unconcerned.

"People might get angry," Hiccup tries again. "At you...damaging their property…"

Toothless lets out an apathetic grumble, almost like a 'blah blah blah.'

"And Snotlout kind of had a point," Hiccup adds. "I mean, before this whole dragon thing, I wasn't exactly the world's best Viking. Or even Berk's best Viking, for that - what, _what_ , what are you - "

Toothless turns on Hiccup, headbutting him in the arm until Hiccup starts backing away, right into the side of Spitelout's house - and then Toothless ducks his head and insinuates it underneath Hiccup's hand, lifting it up until it's even with Hiccup's shoulder and laying on Toothless's nose. Hiccup's resolve softens despite himself, and he lets his hand cup Toothless's snout.

"Is this your way of saying that you won't take that kind of talk from anyone, including me?" he says, and Toothless snorts in agreement and immediately begins licking Hiccup, leaving long trails of - Hiccup doesn't want to think about it.

"Oh, okay, no, no, geeze - this had better wash out…"

(It doesn't.)

ii.

The first mistake was coming to this godsforsaken hunk of rock, which didn't even look very interesting from the air, but Hiccup's been thinking about maybe starting to map some of these islands so he gets Toothless to land. The second mistake was getting _off_ of Toothless instead of, say, doing a lap around the island to see if maybe there were people on it and whether those people might be incredibly hostile towards dragons.

"No, no, it's okay!" Hiccup yells, holding his arms out. "He's a friend! He's a friendly dragon!"

This doesn't do much at all to calm the mob down. There are torches and pitchforks, which frankly probably won't do all that much against a Night Fury's thick hide, but there are also some swords and axes and Hiccup doesn't want to find out if _they_ will.

"Kill the beast!" someone yells, and Hiccup moves directly in front of Toothless.

"Stop!" he shouts, with all the volume he can muster. "It's okay, he's not a threat!"

"That dragon ate that boy's leg!" someone else screams. "It's a _monster_!"

"What, you think Toothless ate my leg and then made me a _fake_ one?" Hiccup demands, momentarily perplexed. "Seriously?"

"Kill the dragon!"

And then people start throwing things, from things which make sense to be thrown (spears and axes) to things that make less sense (the torches), and some of these things are thrown at Hiccup. 

Then there are claws around Hiccup's arms and his feet aren't actually touching the ground anymore and the scared and angry locals are well beneath him.

Hiccup looks up and, sure enough, Toothless has him. "What – Toothless! Put me down!" Because Hiccup's _third_ mistake probably wasn't much of a mistake at all: before he got off Toothless, Hiccup locked his tail so that he'd be able to fly (although based on the turbulence, the tugging on his arms, and the meandering of the flight path, not that well) without Hiccup. And really, this is exactly the kind of situation Hiccup had in mind when he made the tail-lock, although when he envisioned it, he had slightly more dignity.

And of course Toothless flies him all the way to Berk like that. Hiccup's shoulders are sore for a week, his dad gives Toothless extra fish despite Hiccup hissing at him _don't encourage him!_ , and Gobber just laughs at him.

iii.

It's a quiet night on Berk about three days after Hiccup's eighteenth birthday, which passed without any incident whatsoever, which really meant that something like this was bound to happen.

"Son," says Stoick over dinner, "you and Astrid are – well the two of you seem quite fond of each other…"

"I," says Hiccup. The eye on his fish appears to be staring at him beseechingly, and he shares with it a moment of profound empathy. "I mean, yeah, I guess, Astrid's okay I guess, and she and I are – I mean we like each other a lot – "

"Good," says Stoick. "Good, she's – she's a wonderful young warrior, and you're – the two of you are good for each other."

"Oh," says Hiccup. "Um. Thanks?"

"Which is why," says Stoick, taking one of his deep breaths which he only does when something really bad is going to happen and that _never_ happens, "there are some things we should talk about with respect to – to women."

"Oh gods," says Hiccup.

"Now, I know you're…" Stoick struggles for another word, but gives up and repeats, " _fond_ of her, and I think that that's wonderful, really, I do, but there are some things that you have to know now – "

Hiccup gives up on his dinner. He may swear off food entirely, if this conversation is going where he thinks it's going. Or life. "Dad, you really don't have to – "

"As your father and as the Chief, I have an obligation to make sure that you know how to properly court a woman," Stoick says, and Hiccup whips his head up.

"Court?" he repeats.

"Well, of course!" says Stoick. "I know it's been a while since anyone on Berk's gotten married, but we need to make sure the traditions don't die out and, well, Gobber reminded me that – "

"This is _Gobber's_ fault?" Hiccup demands.

" – that you might not know, really, the right way to go about courting – "

"But I don't need to court Astrid!" Hiccup says. "She already knows – I mean, we've talked about this kind of thing and we've kind of been in a relationship for a while and some pretty important words have been said – "

"Trust me, son, you don't want to let the romance go," Stoick says, and reaches across the table to clap a hand on Hiccup's shoulder, slamming Hiccup down into his chair. "I know it hasn't been easy, growing up without your mother, and I admit that I let a few things slip, but I think it's time to make up for that now. So." Stoick pushes his chair back from the table and stands up.

"You – no – why are you doing that," Hiccup says.

"Because," says Stoick, "I'm going to teach you how to _dance_."

Hiccup can feel his eyes go wide, and he says, "Are you sure you don't want me to just defeat another dragon? Maybe another big battle or – "

Stoick pulls him out of his chair and over to a clear section of floor in the main room. "Now it might take you a while to pick up the steps and the words – "

" _Words_?"

"Well, you've got to sing it, too, of course," says Stoick, and really, there's no way that the night is going to be anything other than traumatic after that.

But his dad keeps bringing it up and on the third lesson lets slip that this is how he courted Hiccup's mom and he's always impossible to say no to but it's even more impossible after that. 

Which is how Hiccup ends up on a small, sandy atoll in the middle of the ocean, opening the book he's been using to keep track of all the different islands he's seen, humming the song and trying to match the melody to words in his head. The informal map he's made already spans seven pages, with arrows indicating where they lie with respect to all the others, but one of these days he's really going to have to figure out a way to put them all together into one, maybe glue them and have them fold out –

He realizes he's lost track of the song entirely, and lets the book fall to the sand with a groan.

There's a soft nudge in between his shoulder blades, and a short noise of inquiry from Toothless. Hiccup turns around and strokes his head, following the ridge of his eye socket.

"It's nothing important," he tells Toothless, "just some song and dance my dad wants me to learn. Literally a song and dance. Apparently it's important for tradition or something. At least he didn't use the c-word." Hiccup gives an exaggerated full-body shudder. He knows full well that the day his dad officially names Hiccup as his successor is the day his exploring is over. He's not looking forward to it.

Toothless huffs and tilts his head, his ears flapping slightly.

"I'm – what? I'm not going to show you! Trust me, I'm terrible enough at it as is without you laughing at me, too."

Toothless leans his head forward and starts nosing at Hiccup's chest in short, insistent motions, driving Hiccup back until he finally topples backwards.

"Okay, okay!" Hiccup yelps, "I'll show you! Yeesh." He pushes himself up, brushing the sand out of the ridges of the leather's seams, and straightens himself. "Okay, so, it's a courting song so you're supposed to start off, you know, courting. So not dancing yet, because you don't know if the person you're courting is going to say yes or not, and they say yes by dancing it with you. So theoretically I'll start off and then Astrid will join in, which is stupid because I don't even think Astrid _knows_ this song, but who knows? Maybe Dad's pulled her aside and is teaching it to her, too."

Hiccup momentarily imagines his dad trying to teach Astrid a courting song – not only are they possibly the two Vikings on Berk with the shortest fuses, but it's _his dad_ and _Astrid_ and _dancing_. His brain gives up on the effort altogether.

He gives a full-body shudder and refocuses his attention on Toothless. "Okay. Right. So I sing something like ' _I'll swim and sail on stormy seas, and never fear of drowning_ ' – "

Toothless closes his lips and tilts his head dubiously.

"No, I'm pretty sure that's it, but I wrote it down – I know 'never fear of drowning' is weird, but if you drop the 'of' then the rhythm gets all thrown off…" Hiccup flips the pages in the book until he gets to where he wrote the words down. "Oh. ' _With ne'er a fear of drowning._ ' Okay, well, you were right. Who says _ne'er_ anymore, anyway? Okay, so, ' _I'll swim and sail on savage -_ ' okay, so I had that wrong too, _fine ___\- 'on savage seas, with ne'er a fear of drowning, and gladly ride the waves of life, if you will marry me…'"

He's interrupted before the next verse by Toothless whining and pawing at his own ear.

"Oh, like you're the world's best singer," Hiccup retorts, and Toothless makes a series of noises that, while strangely wobbly, even Hiccup has to admit sounds a lot like the melody. "Stop it, you're distracting me," Hiccup tells him. "And showing me up. Okay, so then it's, ' _No scorching sun nor freezing cold will stop me on my journey, if you would promise me your heart_ \- and then at this point Astrid's supposed to say ' _and love me for eternity_ ,' which apparently means that she accepts my – I don't know, my suit? If I'm her suitor? I kept asking Dad if singing the song means actually asking her to marry me and he wouldn't answer." Hiccup sighs, burying his face in his hands. "Which is just great."

Toothless's heavy head bumps against Hiccup's shoulder, and Hiccup obligingly rubs the flat, raised surface between his eyes.

"Right. Okay. Singing. Well, dancing now." Hiccup straightens, taking a step away from Toothless, and holds out his right arm with his elbow bent. "So then she sings for a while and we kind of cross our wrists – like, her wrist against mine, and then we kind of spin around each other – "

Toothless cranes his neck to put his nose against the inside of Hiccup's wrist and begins circling around him.

"Yes, exactly! And she says something like, ' _my dearest one, my darling dear, your mighty words astound me_ ,' and then we switch sides – " Hiccup drops his right arm and lifts his left, and Toothless immediately switches as well. "At least I think this is where we switch, anyway – and then it's, ' _but I've no need for_ ' – uh, something something – ' _when I feel your arms around me_ ,' and then it's all over to footwork, and I get that Dad's trying to share with me, you know, but it turns out that hopping from one foot to another is a great way for me to kick my dad in the shin with a metal foot."

Toothless takes an abrupt step away from Hiccup, and Hiccup points at him.

"See? Exactly! I don't see why Astrid and I should have to do this stupid courting dance anyway, except…" Hiccup looks down and fiddles with one of the leather straps on his flight suit. "Well, apparently Dad and Mom would dance it together."

Toothless's ears fall, and, eyes wide, he comes closer until he can butt his head against Hiccup's shoulder.

"Yeah," Hiccup says. "So…there's that." He sighs, scratching behind Toothless's ear.

Toothless huffs out a breath, rubbing his face against Hiccup's flight suit, and then backs away far enough to get his head under Hiccup's legs, flipping him over onto Toothless's back and into the saddle.

"Whoa – " Hiccup says, "bud, what are you – "

Toothless starts jumping around, moving his legs independently of one another, until Hiccup realizes that Toothless is trying to _dance_. His footwork is all wrong and he doesn't even have the beat right and Hiccup nearly falls off three separate times before he finally rolls of Toothless's back and into the sand, laughing so hard he almost can't breathe. But at least the melancholy is gone, and when Hiccup returns to the map, it's with a lingering smile on his face.

iv.

Hiccup really, really, _really_ hopes that nobody sees him and Toothless, especially not Astrid, so of course Astrid sees them when they've only reached the outskirts of Berk.

"Hiccup! Where have you been? You left hours ago and – " Astrid stops in the middle of the clearing, her eyes wide in a baffled stare. "I thought you went flying, not…swimming."

Hiccup lifts a hand to quickly touch his hair and, yes, it's still damp. Then he immediately puts his hand back on the saddle to brace himself as Toothless walks forward with Hiccup on his back – it's nothing like the weightless grace of flight. Instead, every step shoves Hiccup from one side to the other, and he's not nearly as secure as he should be.

"We did, yes, we did go…flying," Hiccup says. "There were some minor technical difficulties with Inferno."

Astrid frowns for a moment, then blinks very slowly, as though she's trying to keep from laughing or rolling her eyes. "You named your sword 'Inferno'?"

"It catches on fire! It seemed appropriate!" Hiccup says, and Toothless lets out a skeptical snort. They're much closer to Astrid now, and she comes around to his left to walk with them – only to stop dead when she catches sight of Hiccup and Toothless's left sides.

Hiccup grimaces. He can imagine how bad it looks – the soot on Toothless's side, the scorch marks on the leather of the saddle and Hiccup's flight suit, and his current lack of…leg.

"So your flaming sword had technical difficulties," Astrid says, staring.

"Uh, yeah," Hiccup says. "Just, you know, minor ones…like a leak of Zippleback gas coupled with an unfortunate tendency towards undesired sparking, and in retrospect I _really_ shouldn't have put its scabbard on the same side as the...wooden peg leg."

"What about the metal bits?" Astrid says. She's still staring.

"Oh, they're out there somewhere," Hiccup says, gesturing out towards the ocean. "I mean, really we're just lucky that I wasn't hooked into Toothless's tail when it happened – "

"You were about to jump off Toothless, weren't you," Astrid says flatly.

Toothless gives a grumble of agreement, and shoots a displeased look back at Hiccup.

"I might have been slightly airborne," Hiccup concedes, "but for the record, Toothless was the one who grabbed _me_ and dumped me in the ocean."

Toothless shakes his head, as though casting the water off of it, and lets out a series of noises that Hiccup generally translates to 'thank you for nothing, you useless human.' 

"So, yeah, basically, fire means no leg, no leg means no flying, no leg also means no walking for the poor peg-legged Viking, and no flying and no walking means it's been a very long hike home for poor Toothless here, who will get all the fish he can eat for dinner and my eternal gratitude." Hiccup pats Toothless on the neck for emphasis, and Toothless just narrows his eyes and looks forward, unconvinced. Hiccup shifts his attention back to Astrid, who is _marginally_ more likely to give him sympathy, and frowns at her. "What? What's that look for?"

"Oh, nothing," Astrid says. "I'm just thinking of the titles that Snotlout and Fishlegs have been making up for you. Dragon Conqueror. Master of the Skies – "

"Ha, ha, you're hilarious," Hiccup says, "now can we please get me to Gobber's forge? I have the prototype for my new leg there, and this is probably as good a time as any to test it out, under the circumstances."

Toothless gives a low growl, and Hiccup pats him on the neck again, this time a bit further up, behind his ears. "Don't worry," he says. "I promise this one won't burst into flames."

Toothless looks unconvinced.

v.

Hiccup is…well, he's trying very hard.

He's Chief now, which means a lot of settling disputes that he really doesn't care about and keeping track of how much grain and pickled fish is in the reserves for the winter, which he cares about on a visceral level but has to work really hard to make himself care about on an actual mathematical level. He oversees repairs – a lot of repairs – and does his best to keep the incidents between the Vikings, the dragons that've been living on Berk for years, and the newcomer dragons to a minimum. Having Astrid around helps a lot with the Vikings, who sometimes respect her pointedly polishing her axe behind Hiccup more than they respect Hiccup himself; having his mom around helps a lot with the new dragons, who at least find her familiar; and having Toothless around just helps on basically every level.

It's hard work, and it's not work that he likes. He barely has any time to spend in the forge, other than looking at Gobber's designs for new perches and bigger feeding stations and giving the go-ahead while someone else tugs on his wrist because one of the new dragons is harassing the sheep and isn't that only supposed to happen in the dragon races now? He barely has any time to fly, other than for construction purposes. He barely has time to sleep, and even when he has the time, he doesn't sleep particularly well.

He just – every time he's half-asleep and hears the house creak, he thinks it's his dad. Every time something wakes him up too early, he thinks it's his dad. Every time he walks into the house, he expects to see his dad. It never is his dad, his dad is never there, his dad will never be there, and if Hiccup thinks about it for too long it feels like a Terrible Terror is chewing on his insides and it gets hard to breathe and so he doesn't think about it, not even when he passes the statue of his dad that they're putting up, but he doesn't get much sleep.

And when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can see the soft outline of Toothless sleeping on his bed across the room, and Hiccup kind of hates it but while sometimes it helps immensely, sometimes it does the opposite.

He can tell that Astrid can tell, and he can tell that Toothless can tell, and even his mother, who frankly has basically no idea how human interaction works anymore, has been giving him sideways looks, but there's just too much to _do_. What is he supposed to do, take an afternoon off from being Chief so that he can go have a breakdown?

Which is kind of how they catch him by surprise. The masons accidentally chisel one of the horns of Stoick's helmet off, and apparently deciding between the method of sticking it back on that will be more resistant to water and snow damage or the one that will be more resistant to fire damage is an urgent matter for the Chief, even if said Chief can't look at the statue for more than a few seconds at a time. (Admittedly, the missing horn helps a bit with that. The whole Vikingest-of-Vikings quality of his dad that the statue otherwise captures doesn't work as well when it's lopsided.)

At least, it's an urgent matter until the familiar shrieking whoop of a Night Fury sounds out across the island, and Hiccup looks up just as Toothless passes overhead, a familiar figure on his back that nevertheless takes a moment to place –

"Astrid?" Hiccup says. "Why aren't you on – "

And then Stormfly's claws grab Hiccup's arms, and Hiccup is once again airborne.

"Okay, this is _not funny_ ," Hiccup yells, and Astrid looks back from Toothless.

"What's that?" she yells. "I can't hear you over the wind!"

"Stormfly!" Hiccup shouts. "Put me down!"

"If you're going to tell her to put you down, you should keep in mind that we're over the ocean," Astrid calls to him, and Hiccup makes the mistake of looking down. It's one thing to be hundreds of feet up in the air on the back of your best friend, your trusted dragon, your buddy, and it's another to be dangling from the claws of your girlfriend's dragon, especially when she might be angry at you, or might be worried for you, but either way is definitely kidnapping you.

"Toothless! Come on, this isn't funny!"

Toothless glances back and, yeah, he can definitely hear Hiccup. He's just ignoring him.

Great.

They fly to one of the closer islands to Berk, which has no Vikings or dragons and is basically the most boring island on the map, but at least Astrid and Toothless land and Stormfly finally lets go of Hiccup, who only stumbles a little bit. 

"Okay, what is this? Is this an intervention? Is it a kidnapping? I have a lot of things I should be doing back on Berk – "

Astrid pulls her hood back and shakes her braid out. "What, like dealing with the statue? Relax, your mom is taking care of it."

"Oh, so it's a conspiracy now?" Hiccup demands, before what Astrid says actually catches up with him. "Wait, you put my mom in charge of something where she has to talk to _people_? Human people?"

"She'll be fine," Astrid says. "She intimidates them."

"How is that _fine_?" Hiccup says. He can hear his voice going shrill, but, as in all other times when his voice does that, he can't do much about it.

"To answer your question," Astrid says, blatantly ignoring him, "yes. It's an intervention _and_ a kidnapping. Isn't that right, Toothless?"

And all of a sudden Toothless's hot dragon-breath is ruffling the back of Hiccup's hair, and he turns around to see Toothless giving him his big, stupid, gummy dragon grin, teeth retracted. 

"Now that is _not_ fair," Hiccup says. "You know I can't say no to that face."

Astrid comes up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders, bringing her head close to his ear. "That's kind of the point," she says, one of her hands carding through Hiccup's hair right at the base of his neck. "You've been working too hard. You need a break, for everyone else's sanity if not your own."

"What do you mean? The village is doing just fine!" Hiccup protests, craning his neck to try to look at her.

"Hiccup," Astrid says gently, "the thing about the village is that everyone more or less knows what they're doing. They don't need you to tell them every little thing."

"Oh really? Then why do they keep asking me things?" Hiccup says. "I was half an hour into a discussion of different kinds of mortar when you kidnapped me!"

Astrid watches him with an expression that he's only ever seen directed at him (and, okay, one time at Toothless): it says "he's an idiot, but he's okay anyway." "Because," she says, "you're the new Chief and they all want to impress you and make sure you know what they can do."

"Of course I know what they can do, I've lived with all of them my whole life!"

"And now you're the Chief," Astrid says, as though it explains everything. "But you still need to watch out for yourself, and that means taking a little time off." She squeezes his shoulders and then steps back. "So you and Toothless are going to pick a direction and fly for a while, and if anyone sees you back in Berk before nightfall, they're going to treat it as a defensive training exercise against a Sniffing Serpentia."

Hiccup winces despite himself. The Sniffing Serpentia, known for its acute sense of smell, is best distracted by the liberal application of incredibly foul-smelling - well, anything. Berk had an unfortunate run-in with one a few years ago, and now they keep a supply of pungent materials on hand in a small cave down by the water just in case. In the summer, when it's warm enough to wear short sleeves for more than an hour without having to worry about frostbite, the smell wafts up the cliffs. It was responsible for three fainting spells last summer alone.

"This is entirely unnecessary," Hiccup says.

"You're not even going to realize how much you needed this until you get back," Astrid tells him, and pats him on the shoulder. "You're going to feel so much better."

"I feel fine!" Hiccup protests.

"If you're not home by daybreak tomorrow we'll send out the search parties, so don't go too far."

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided!"

Astrid gives him a quick peck on the cheek and then backs away. "Have fun!" she says cheerfully, crossing her arms and waiting.

Toothless sinks down closer to the ground, like a cat about to pounce, and claps together his back-flaps a few times for good measure.

"Yeah, yeah," Hiccup mutters, coming forward to situate himself in the saddle. "I don't even have my flight suit," he adds, louder, "because _someone_ didn't tell me that today was going to involve a forced kidnapping!"

"Just didn't want to ruin the surprise!" Astrid calls, and Toothless takes off.

Hiccup only looks back once, when Astrid and Stormfly are just a shrinking black silhouette disappearing back towards Berk. Then he turns forward, leaning into the saddle, and sighs.

There's another island off in the distance, a lonely cluster of stone spikes reaching up from the ocean. Fluffy, dark-bottomed clouds rake across it, dropping ribbons of gray rain onto the stone. He thinks about getting Toothless to land there and just wasting time until the two of them can come back to Berk without getting coated in something disgusting, but a quick glance down shows that Toothless is actually enjoying himself; his shoulders are moving with his wings in the way they only do when Toothless is really putting effort into it, and his ears are up and forward to catch the wind.

Besides, without his flight suit, Hiccup also doesn't have his map, so it's not like stopping on the island would be helpful for _that _.__

__So he lets Toothless keep flying and tries to remember what he has to do when they get back. First on his agenda is, obviously, to repair any damage his mother may have done to the masons. There are still houses waiting to get the last bit of roofing put up, including Snotlout's, so he should help with that. When Hiccup had walked around the village to get a sense of the damage, he'd stood in front of Snotlout's fireplace and looked up to see a wide expanse of sky where there should have been roof; not as much sky as Hiccup can see now, obviously, and not as deep a blue because there'd been more of it above him, instead of the thin air of this altitude._ _

__But he can still feel it - the air, that is, sending ripples into the baggy corners of his clothes that he hasn't bothered to take in yet, whipping through his hair and filling his lungs with its sharp-cold substance._ _

__He really _did_ miss this._ _

__All the troubles of Berk, the arguments and the damage and the constant reminders of where his dad isn't, might as well be on the bottom of the ocean for all that they matter up here. For the first time since Drago, Hiccup can feel his shoulders relax, and he hadn't even realized how tense they'd been._ _

__"Okay, bud," he says, leaning forward so Toothless will be able to hear him. "You and Astrid were right."_ _

__Toothless looks back at him, his mouth closed and his eyes wide with smugness, and Hiccup suddenly leans forward, ignoring the reins in favor of giving Toothless a big hug around the neck._ _

__"Chief or not," he says into Toothless's scales, "and Alpha or not, we gotta find a way to keep doing this."_ _

__Toothless flaps his ears a few times and takes them into a dive. Hiccup tightens his hold and whoops as his stomach goes weightless._ _

__Later, Hiccup knows, he and Toothless will go back to Berk - to the way the watery light of the midnight sun strikes the patches of grass, to the smell of the bright paints being applied to every house, to the fleeting moments of shade when flocks of dragons block out the sun, to Astrid and his mom and the towering statue of his dad. But for now it's just him and Toothless and an infinity of ocean and sky and whatever else they'll find out here._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed warnings: contains references to canonical character death in HTTYD 2, and at one point Hiccup's prosthetic leg is accidentally damaged, depriving him of its use. Also some threats of dragon-related violence.


End file.
